Wheaton College Alumni Magazine Spring 2014 | Page 23

Liz Ormesher Salcedo ’07 was a social worker with a problem—
her smartphone kept dying.

So she and her husband, Dan Salcedo ’08, came up with a solution—
Everpurse, a purse that doubles as a smartphone charger. They
launched their company in August 2011, and began shipping purses
in July 2013.
On Katie Couric’s talk show last September, Liz presented Everpurse
to the cast of Shark Tank, a reality show that gives entrepreneurs the
opportunity to sell investors on their product or service. Thanks in
part to this national exposure, Everpurse sold out of product over the
Christmas holiday. Now with seven employees, the pair is dreaming
up more solutions to make life easier by adding a “smart” component
to popular brands of fashion accessories.
Liz and Dan represent just two of a number of students and young
alumni who are in the process of building their own businesses. In
fact, entrepreneurial activity is on the rise at Wheaton, fueled in part
by a campus-wide contest with a $2,000 prize and the added bonus of
business mentoring advice from a local businessman, Tim Johnson ’97.
Hosted by Student Government, this contest—Wheaton’s first
“Shark Tank” competition—took place in December. Six student
groups presented their business model to a panel of judges.
“Shark Tank was a huge success,” says Cannon Allen ’15, president
of Wheaton’s investment club. “There is a growing population
at Wheaton that really wants to find new opportunities to create.”
One of the judges, Dr. Annette Tomal, associate professor of
business and economics, came away